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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28797906">Outside The Soulsnare</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaturalintrovert/pseuds/anaturalintrovert'>anaturalintrovert</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ni No Kuni Fics [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Coma, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, okay that tag is dumb i swear this is a serious angst fic i promise, oliver’s in the soulsnare and the party really said “time for a picnic” huh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 08:00:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,563</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28797906</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaturalintrovert/pseuds/anaturalintrovert</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody knows how to deal with Oliver being stuck in the Soulsnare. What’s worse is that Esther and Swaine have very different ideas of what it means to deal with something as bad as this.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jairo | Swaine &amp; Maru | Esther, Jairo | Swaine &amp; Maru | Esther &amp; Oliver (Ni no Kuni), Jairo | Swaine &amp; Maru | Esther &amp; Oliver (Ni no Kuni) &amp; Shizuku | Drippy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ni No Kuni Fics [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899427</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Outside The Soulsnare</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I kept telling myself to not write something angsty but then this happened, whoops. Here’s soulsnare angst. Enjoy :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Esther had found a way of coping with Oliver in the Soulsnare.</p><p>The citizens of Perdida had learned her coping mechanism, too. They heard her harp play gently until late, usually followed by a long period of silence. Sleep. Some nights she played her harp til morning, on the nights where her mind refused to sleep.</p><p>She played short songs, longer songs, sometimes songs she'd use to raise defences and attacks in battle. That was all this was, right? A battle. A battle could be won. Give him strength to pull through.</p><p>Some nights she'd just play random notes and melodies.</p><p>Drippy would have complained, but he'd tried Tidy Tears too many times and was tired of being unable to do anything. He mostly just talked to Oliver, usually when Esther and Swaine were both out. Esther didn't leave a lot, but sometimes would go to find something to eat and bring back a gift for Oliver. Swaine was never in the room. Well, Drippy had caught him in Oliver's room once. He was just silently standing there, and Drippy couldn't see the tears from the angle and height he was at.</p><p>It was early in the morning. A small herd of dragons flew over Perdida and cried out and let smoke bleed from their mouths. The sounds of gentle growling overhead had awoken her. She instinctively reached for her harp, positioned her fingers on strings before stopping herself.</p><p>What was she doing here?</p><p>She paused for a moment, considering. She set her harp down. Slowly. Easy. It was funny, really, like she was trying not to wake Oliver up. The irony made her start crying. She wanted him up. Awake. She didn't want to scare him, though. She didn't want to lose him by scaring him away. Such a stupid fear. How stupid of her.</p><p>Swaine walked in the room briefly. He held a bread roll. He seemed to think Esther was asleep when he walked into the room. She wasn't. She was very still, like a statue. "I already ate," He explained bluntly. "Figured you'd be hungry when you woke up."</p><p>Esther didn't turn to look at him. She'd been kneeling by her friend's side for so long that her legs were numb. She didn't turn. "Thank you."</p><p>"I'll be outside."</p><p>"Come and sit with me."</p><p>"No, I don't think I will." She was half expecting him to have some banter with her. Make a joke. Be sardonic. She wanted him to be normal, well, his version of normal.</p><p>Swaine left as quickly as he'd entered and Esther swore she heard shaky breathing. She watched Oliver carefully. His chest was rising and falling, slowly. It looked like he had an invisible weight on his chest. She wanted to lift the weight. Cast levitate or something. Pick it up with brute force and chuck it away and hug him when he woke up.</p><p>Drippy was asleep, like a doll, by his side. She didn't want to wake the fairy. His lantern lit up Oliver's face and made him look more alive. Not to mention that she hated hearing him jabber on and on to the boy who couldn't listen.</p><p>She hated hearing her own music drone in the air, hang meaninglessly in the sky, and knowing that Oliver could probably hear none of it. It was probably so dark...</p><p>"I can hear you outside the door, Swaine."</p><p>Esther, under any other circumstance, would have opened the door and watched Swaine fall in the room. Esther would laugh first, Swaine would be tempted to curse at her, and then laugh later on. No, for now she knocked on the door and waited for him to open. How funny, she was asking for permission to let him inside. So funny. She'd wiped her tears and her arm was wet.</p><p>She opened the door after a second. Swaine was walking away. "Hey, wait..."</p><p>"Wait for what?"</p><p>She hadn't thought that far ahead. "We need to do something."</p><p>"No kidding. We need to do something. Nice observation." He curbed his bitterness harshly until his sharp tone was nothing more than blunt and dull. Hopeless. He wouldn't even go along with anything due to his impulsivity. He just stopped caring. It was safer that way. "We can't do anything. I can't steal Oliver back, and you can't serenade him with music. Drippy can't yell at him until he comes back. What can we do?"</p><p>"Oliver is stuck in there and we need to support him until he gets out." She hated saying the word, the Soulsnare, such a vicious term brought despair into her soul. "We need to do something about what's going on out here. Oliver wouldn't want to leave the people of this world uncertain. He'd want to give out the truth."</p><p>"The truth? Look where that got him!" Swaine shook his head, angry at himself more than anyone. "The kid got promised the truth about his life, his mother, and look where that got him!"</p><p>"What's this about the truth, eh?"</p><p>"Nothing Drippy." Esther waited until the fairy had drifted back off to sleep and pointed past Swaine to the outside. "Talk to me," She demanded quietly.</p><p>The two of them sat on the steps of Perdida's entrance. It was freezing and cloudy. The clouds looked like dragons but Esther knew that it was just water in the sky. Esther clutched her harp. Swaine spun the barrel of his gun. Silence for a while. Swaine then interrupted with, "What are you suggesting? We go around and tell everyone that the Pure Hearted One, the Saviour of this World, is dead?" The last word had slipped out accidentally. He didn't even try to amend it. He shut up.</p><p>"He isn't dead," Esther reminded him sharply. "He's... He's out of commission. Unavailable. Case and point: he can't save the world right now. We can support him from out here, but he has to be the one to wake up. We can’t do anything other than support him.”</p><p>"How? Other than sitting by his bedside day and night." It sounded almost like a jab at Esther. He'd do the same, had he the confidence and the courage. The one time he should stop restraining himself and he had pulled back harder than ever. Sweet irony. Of course, he'd completely broken down when he did see the boy. He would be a thieving scumbag brat still if it weren't for him and his magic. Esther owed him the world, too, and she knew it.</p><p>“I don’t know!” Esther exclaimed, then came the waterworks, then came despair. “I don’t know, okay? I just feel so useless right now. We were so close! We were this close to just... winning! So close to no more wars and no more heartbreak...”</p><p>Swaine stayed quiet for a second. He looked up into the clouds and remembered how they as a team had flown amongst them on the back of a dragon. Oliver was always looking down when flying that creature. Everyone knew why he looked down to the ground. They knew he was looking for people who needed help.</p><p>Perdida was beautiful. It was a new dawn and the perfect time for Oliver to awaken. But no, he was still too delicate to be awoken. A few more days, right?</p><p>“It’s okay that you don’t know what to do. Sorry, I was being unreasonable by pushing it. I’m lost too.” Swaine shook his head. “If you’d like to stay here, that’s okay. I’m getting some fresh air though.”</p><p>“...I want some fresh air too.”</p><p>“I’ll get Tengri’s horn, you get provisions. An airborne picnic is in order I’d say. In honour of Oliver, to let him know that we’re thinking of him.”</p><p>“Stop talking like he’s dead.” There was a pause. “But yes. That would be quite nice.”</p><p>They left Drippy with him so that, on the slim off chance that Oliver woke up, he wouldn’t be fully alone. They spent the morning eating bread rolls, eating sandwiches, drinking coffee, just existing on a dragon’s back while soaring through the clouds. Neither spoke because they didn’t have to. They thought about Oliver while sat up there.</p><p>There was a brief break from the silence. Esther started it. “I’m glad that everything happened, in hindsight. I’m glad we ended up on this adventure.”</p><p>“Ha. I guess I’m glad.”</p><p>“One day we’ll look back and smile at the memories.” She was half right. Yes, they would look back and smile at most of the memories, but this memory would not be one of them. “Sorry for being like this.”</p><p>“Nothing to apologise for. I could do with taking a leaf out of your book.”</p><p>The two of them looked down to the ground for people who need help. They were passing over water at the time and their reflections stared back.</p><p>Esther didn’t break eye contact with her reflection. “This’ll be a memory someday.”</p><p>Swaine hummed in agreement but was quick to break eye contact with his reflection.</p><p>When they returned, they secretly hoped that Oliver would magically be awake, but no. Sometimes the world was nasty like that.</p><p>Esther kept playing her harp, Swaine kept his distance, Drippy kept talking.</p><p>Life goes on until it doesn’t, and even then the party could remember the good times. Such is the way of the world.</p>
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